Snowshoeing

The other event of the 3 day weekend (besides skiing) was snowshoeing! Becca, Lindsey, Tenley, Dave and I all went up to Aspen Grove. We decided to take the trail marked for snowshoeing up this hill that looked pretty hike-able. So we started out all determined to make it to the top and excited to be in the snow. Of course we didn't make it very far before we had to have a snowshoeing race. So Dave videotaped us 4 racing in our snowshoes, falling all over each other to make it to the finish line. I won! Ya! That's only because the other 3 tripped each other while I barely escaped the dog pile! hehehe...

After exerting all of that energy, we decided to try for the top to get a good view. Lindsey was our leader and plowed a nice path for the rest of us to follow up the steep mountainous-hill. It was hilarious to watch from behind Lindsey and Becca trying to get up the hills and falling to their stomach, sliding down the trail they had just made. We got to the dense part of the brush and were really having problems trying to find our way through the shrubs and sticks and trees. So, sadly, we gave up and went back down to go take pictures and play in the snow. I love these types of trips where all you do is laugh the whole time! Fun fun!

SKIING!

My first ski of the season was a night ski!--I've never done that before. I totally thought that I'd be way hard to see and ski well, but it turned out to be ok. Theresa, Lisa, Jesse, and I headed up to Brighton to take advantage of the cheap $14 ski trip. I was way excited to go for basically 3 reasons:

1.)to go with my friends, since I haven't been skiing with them in so long,
2.)to get some practice in before I went with Travis in a few weeks,
3.) and TO SKI!
So basically I am really really rusty! I was all stiff and just didn't feel like pushing myself and going super fast nor doing hard stuff. So Tee and I hung out the whole night since we have similar ski styles. I had a blast and enjoying doing something that I hadn't done in so long!

Shooting With the Kiddos

As part of my Christmas vacation I of course had to plan some sort of event to do with my siblings. This time it was shooting. Travis brought his guns and we trespassed on some private property, because there seems to be no where close to go shooting. It was really fun for me to watch my brothers and sisters have a good time doing something that they don't get to do too often. They all were a pretty good shot, especially Sarah, which I was surprised about. She totally knocked down the clay pigeons while all I could say for myself is that the gun kicked back too hard for me to shoot at them accurately. Well she definitely made me look dumb! :P Of course, Joe and Jordan were good and hit a lot of the clay pigeons, and Emily and Claire had fun with the .22, my favorite too. I guess I'm just at 10 year old shooting level. :) So, not only was it really fun to spend time with the fam, I realized that I have some target shooting practice to get to!

More Coyotes?

Home for the holidays! And Travis came to visit. So of course we set out to go call some coyotes. Well, that wasn't the main purpose of the day, we also went site seeing and hiking and wanted to find a place to go shooting the next day. But we of course couldn't pass up the opportunity to call some coyotes. So we set out to Jeffco Open Space, all decked out in camo. Travis was having a blast honking on his calls while I'm sitting in the brush freezing. I'm convinced that this coyote calling business doesn't really exist. We still haven't seen a single coyote! But I continue to go and hide in the weeds scouting out these ferocious animals. (By the way, we can't shoot on Jeffco Open Space so basically we were calling this wolf-like animal to come charging at us without anything to kill them with! Sounds like fun, huh?)

Since there weren't any coyotes to be found, I decided it was time to take some pictures and roll around in the weeds with Travis...Ok, not like THAT. ;) While we were taking pictures, Travis decides to take a video of me trying to use the calling thingy. I'm not very good at it. It sounded more like a kazoo than a howl or dead rabbit. It's a pretty funny video. So yet again, we returned home without seeing a single coyote, all safe and sound.

Snowboarding!

This last weekend I went snowboarding for the first time with my family. My brother Joe had tried it a couple weeks ago and just loved it! So my dad decided to take us snowboarding at Copper Mountain and have us all try it out. It was me, my dad, Sarah, Joe, Jordan and Joe's friends that went. We started on a short green with all the ski school people. We were one of the first ones up so it was nice and fresh with a small layer of powder on our 1st run down. The 1st run was soooo funny! I laughed the whole way watching all of us slip and fall and try again. We all had our share of crashes landing on our tail bones, hips, wrists, shoulders, and backs. There's just something funny about falling that makes you laugh. :)

Well after the 1st run, my toes were FROZEN! I have never experienced pain like I did when I went to the lodge to let them defrost! It hurt sooooo bad! Sarah went with me and should've taken a picture of all the funny facial expressions I was making. It was horrible! So I stuck some hand warmers down my socks and went on with the day. I was fine after that if any of you were wondering. :)

The rest of the day was really good. We all got to the point where we could stay up and slow down on one side of the board but all had problems with the other side, if you know what I mean. Like for me, since I'm goofy foot, I was fine carving on the heal side, but toe side I just couldn't get down. And by the end of the day my legs were burning so bad that I couldn't get anywhere very fast. Definitely need to get into shape!

Overall, the day was really good, even with all the bumps and bruises. I had a lot of fun laughing and talking with my dad and siblings on the lifts. Maybe I'll try it again one of these days.

4wheelin and Coyote Callin

Thanksgiving is traditionally the lazy holiday for me. It's the break from all the hard work during the semester and the calm before the storm of cramming for finals. So although this year I did not spend all my time lounging around my house with my family, I went to Las Vegas (as usual) to spend Thanksgiving with Travis and his family and had another adventure: 4wheeling!

We decided to try and find the back way into Red Rocks. It's suppose to be a pretty fun 4wheeling trail and definitely was until we reached the road washout. The road was completely gone! There were huge rock bed boulders blocking our way and we noticed that there were many jeeps who had tried to go through and had bottomed-out all over the place. So we decided that the Tacoma probably couldn't handle it and went on our way to go call in some coyotes.

Continuing on with my hunting experiences, Travis decided we had to call in some coyotes. So I LET him dress me up in his hunting garb and we staked out in the bushes trying to bring the coyotes to us. Now I would NEVER TRY to bring any sort of wild animal my way and was glad to know that Travis is a pretty good shot, especially after watching him the last time we went hunting. So we sat there just waiting and watching for coyotes. Now I wish I could tell you that all these scary coyotes came running our way and that it was such a rush and wild experience, but I decided that they must already be dormant for the winter or something because we saw nothin! Supposedly we did hear some call back to us, but I thought it was another caller but I could be wrong.

So since we had the guns, I got to practice my target shooting with the 22. :) That's always fun and I'm hoping to take my brothers and sisters out over Christmas. Yeah!